My Short Sweet Life as a Human Target

I could think of nothing to recommend me when Susie asked me to join their senior women’s ice hockey team. After all I had only skated on figure skates, and that was over forty years ago, a time when hockey was still resolutely a boys-only sport.

Susie explained the team was made up of moms who decided to take up the sport after many hours of chauffeuring their young daughters to remote rinks at predawn hours. Not only did I not fit Susie’s demographic as a hockey mom, but additionally I’d be the only AARP member on the team. Even so she pressed forward with her sales pitch. “You’ll pick it up quickly,” she said, “after all you’re athletic.”

Yes, I’d like to think of myself as athletic, but any such reputation is based on racquet sports, and within this narrow field my expertise is entirely focused on my forehand. Mine is a freakishly blistering stroke, both cross court and down the line, but the rest of my game is crap – a wildly inconsistent backhand, no net game, feeble pitty-pat serve and slow lumbering movements around the court. Apparently, my forehand was enough to get me recruited to an ice hockey team.

This compliment prompted me to consider a new sport. My tennis learning curve had long since stalled out. To improve I would need to move beyond my innate athletic abilities and become a truly committed athlete, willing to invest time, effort, and above all money for lessons. Susie had suggested an identity as flexibly athletic rather than as a single sport committed athlete. Perhaps I could quickly ascend the steep learning curve of hockey since I was “athletic.” Perhaps the hand-eye coordination on glorious display with my forehand could extrapolate to hockey. Yes, I not only took the bait, I engulfed it, slurped it up in a spasm of pride. I joined the Hot Flashes, a hockey team whose name accurately reflected my estrogen level.

My first foray on hockey skates was a sobering experience. I was only familiar with the toe pick of figure skates that propels a skater forward in mincing steps. In contrast, hockey skates require a vigorous side to side movement with the edges of the skates digging into the ice. The incompatibility of the two skating movements was vividly demonstrated by my immediate prat fall. Then there was the issue of stopping, requiring a major weight shift, ideally embellished with a spray of snow. I could only stop by running into the rink wall.

My inability to stop or change directions gave me pause, but then I realized that the goalie position does not require speed, sharp turns or skating backward, a prospect I had totally abandoned given my challenges in moving forward. The team needed a goalie and even better, this position fit my secret agenda. My husband Nick was a hockey winger in college, and I thought it would an interesting experience to share a sport. Over the twenty years of our marriage we were both miserable in our attempts to play mixed doubles tennis. Nick was continually disappointed in my play – like me he wondered why someone with such a good forehand couldn’t hit a backhand. So if we were going to share an interest in hockey, I knew that I had to play a different position. Separate but equal.

I was pleased to hear him say, “I could never play goalie. They’re basically human targets. You do realize that people are going to be shooting projectiles at you.”

The concept of a human target was momentarily disturbing. My only previous experience was as a dodge ball player in grade school and I loved it – loved the dodging and weaving, watching the ball harmlessly sail by me and then taunting the opponents. However, as a hockey goalie, the point was not to get out of the way, but actually get hit. The successful goalie was essentially a fearless human target with bruises to show for it. I relaxed when I thought of the swaddling fat suit of padding that would envelop. I pointed out to Nick that I would be far safer as a goalie than a skater flailing and splatting on the ice. Nick had seen me skate and appreciated my logic. From my point of view things were falling into place. In fact Nick agreed to be our team coach.

At our first practice Nick lined up a series of pucks in an arc in front of the goal and started taking shots. His strategy was simply to plunk me dead on to demonstrate that a key goalie strategy is just taking up space. As he moved along the arc, he hit his shots with more zip and elevation; the pucks rose from skate level, to shin and finally thigh. Far from taking advantage of the vengeful opportunity before him, he shot at me with a pure and loving heart, tempering his innate enthusiasm in order to simulate the shots that I’d face.

I was thrilled to hear a sharp clang when the puck ricocheted off my skate blade, the clunk when the puck hit my stick, and the dull thunk when it hit my pad. As he amped up the velocity, I felt his growing admiration as he realized that his wife was a fearless gamer, someone who would meet him at least halfway in a male arena. His added bonus was the embellished story he told his tennis team when they grumbled about domestic tribulations. Nick would boast, “Boys, I’ve got it made. I just go out and shoot pucks at my wife.” But the truth was that we agreed the arrangement provided a deep and mutual satisfaction.

Nick assessed my game-time abilities during the scrimmages at the end of our practices and offered a few tips. “There are two types of goalies – floppers and stand up goalies,” he said, “I’d recommend that you become a stand-up goalie because you are struggling to get back up off the ice.”

I agreed. A flopping beached whale came to my mind, but I kept that horrifying image to myself.

“If you use your stick and glove more,” he continued, “you won’t have to get up and down. Now here is my second suggestion. You’ve just got to protect your five hole. It’s wide open.”

“The five hole, what the hell is that?” I thought. I looked down at my equipment and saw no exposed flesh anywhere.

He noticed my confusion and realized I needed coaching in standard hockey jargon. He pointed his stick at the four corners of the net, “These are the basic targets for a shooter – the four holes in the corners of the net, and this, this hole between your skates – well that’s the five hole.” He took his stick and clacked it back and forth between my skates.

Frankly the five hole seemed to be the least of my worries. First of all it was small compared to the other holes, and seemed easy enough to block off with my stick.

“Here’s the problem,” said Nick, “You flinch when someone shoots a puck at you, and when you flinch you lift your stick like this.” He mimicked my signature move by closing his eyes, turning his head, arching his back, which in turn lifted his stick off the ice. “See now your five hole is gaping open. Just remember to keep your stick on the ice and you’ll be okay.”

With that crash course in net-minding, off we went to our first game at Johnny’s Ice House in Chicago. We gathered in our assigned locker room and started to put our gear on. “Smells like hockey in here,” said one of my teammates, commenting on the stale sweaty odor from the three teams that preceded us. “Don’t think that I washed my jersey from last year either.” As everyone unfurled their rumpled jerseys for a general sniff party, I realized that this was the first time that I had ever experienced the camaraderie of a locker room.

In grade school I remember two signs posted at the entrance to the boys’ locker room: “There is no “I” in team,” and “The Only Difference Between Champ and Chump is U.” There was frequently music playing, raucous laughter and even singing. I was jealous. Organized sports for women were rare in the 1960s; the softball teams and field hockey teams I participated in never involved anything as sophisticated as a locker room or even a coach. We simply just walked onto the field and started playing. I always wondered what went on in the inner sanctum.

Now I knew that cramped locker rooms are the place where team spirit is born. And team spirit has the smell of unwashed jerseys. And the sound of cinched skate laces. And the sight of unzipped equipment bags cluttering the tacky floor. And the touch of sticks tapping my pads in a show of solidarity. And our collective goal of not embarrassing ourselves.

The whistle blew and off we went. My teammates initially controlled the puck and fussed around in the front of the opposing goalie, but I got a sick feeling as an opponent gathered up the puck and started up the ice. I recognized her. It was that big-boned young woman with the white pants with pink piping that I spotted during warm-up, the one with sharp crossovers who made deep seated knuckled-cracking sounds and theatrical stops spewing ice chips aloft. I imagined that she was a Canadian farm girl who had honed her power game on the back yard pond with her five older brothers. Basically my worst nightmare.

It is a hockey principle never to criticize your teammates, but frankly my team was overmatched. My first and second lines of defense simply evaporated as the woman deftly moved between and around them. And then it was just the two of us. I glided out to meet her to cut down her shooting angle and then slowly eased backward, hoping that I was still in line with the goal and had not drifted off to the side leaving an open net. A couple yards in front of me she dropped her shoulder, leaned in and slapped the puck.

In that one instant I realized that the fundamental skill of goalies is that they must always choose fight over flight. All logic and intuition screamed at me to get out of there and dash for safety, but based on the cozy locker room scene I did not want to let my team mates down. I took in a deep breath and marshaled all my will power to stay put. As the puck screamed toward me, my gloved left hand rose on its own volition. I felt as if I was an outsider witnessing a bravura performance orchestrated by nothing more than a brainstem. Everyone stopped play. I assumed that the puck was in its usual location in the back of the net, but when I turned it wasn’t there. The ref then skated up and plucked it out of my glove. I was astonished. My stunned teammates cheered and tapped their sticks on the ice and even the opponents nodded in acknowledgement. I became a firm believer that the instinctual hand-eye coordination of my forehand could extrapolate to hockey. Susie was right.

As the game went on there were certainly moments when I succumbed to flight. I saw Nick madly pantomiming from the bench to keep my stick on the ice, but periodically I winced, lifted my stick and suffered the tragedy of a gaping five hole. At the end of our 7-2 loss, my teammates came up touched their forehead to mine in grateful appreciation. After all, I had borne witness and manned my post in the face of five breakaways.

After the game we invited Coach Nick to join us in the scuzzy cocoon of the locker room. He had recently seen my teammates in full-on glamour mode at a community fund raiser. Now he was momentarily stunned to see them with matted hair, faces smeared with sweat and legs splayed out as gear was removed. But Nick was totally experienced with locker room culture and settled in. After all, this is what hockey players do at the end of the game; the locker room is a barrier-buster.

Instead of the quiet and anxious pregame murmuring, the post game locker room was filled with raucous recaps of bonehead plays. I described my fleeting concern that the rink was on fire when I saw smoke rising to the rink’s ceiling. I looked around me a couple of times until I finally realized that the smoke was merely a plume of steam rising from my overheated head. Our defeat faded into the background. I forgot about five holes, cutting down angles, flopping or standing. That wasn’t the point anymore. Hockey became all about the locker room. I hadn’t realized that this joyful bonding was what I had been missing in my athletic life for so many years.

Given the shortage of goalies, I was invited to join a spring league comprised of a mixture of players from different teams, each of whom who had been ranked by their original teammates. The organizers sought parity, and teams supposedly included an even assortment of highly experienced college players ranging down to inexperienced elders such as me.

This locker room smelled differently. I had rejoiced in the stale odor of the first locker room, an odor that symbolized hard work toward a common goal. But now the sour smell smacked of the individual anxiety of players who were sizing up their team mates. Who was the strongest and who was the weakest? I erupted in flop sweat when I realized I was certainly the weak link. The mantra of hockey is that “defense wins play-offs” and given a choice, I don’t think anyone would want the weakest player to be the goalie. Nobody tapped my pads in a show of unity as we headed out to the rink.

As we warmed up, I was encouraged to see that on defense the woman with the buzz cut and tattoos was one of the best players, and another good player was a forward. However our opponent’s best players were better than my team’s best players, and once again I was faced with several break aways. My efforts produced my usual smattering of five hole disasters mixed with a few athletic saves, a performance that my old team had grown to expect and appreciate. However, this team had a much loftier goal – they actually cared about winning and I emerged as the most proximate cause of our loss.

The post-game locker room was quiet and strained. Finally, the buzz cut defense woman sniped at the forward across the room, “You know it is difficult to win if you’re off sides all the time.”

The forward shot back, “Well I wouldn’t be off sides if you fed me better outlet passes.”

I shrank back into the bench, fearful that I would be the next target. Suddenly the mostly naked forward leapt towards the woman with the buzz cut. The two tussled madly on the grimy floor, sticky with the sweat and detritus of dozens before them. My eyes widened. Their flailing legs had now knocked over a bench crushing a bottle of water. Shouldn’t someone intervene? If so, it certainly wasn’t going to be me – my tame suburban upbringing had provided no guidance on the etiquette of a cat fight. Finally, two other players stepped in and broke up the fight. The room sank into an electric silence.

As I gathered up my gear, I realized that the tight confines of the locker room only guarantee strong emotions and I was lucky that my first experience was positive. My magical bonding was in part born of limited expectations; more ambitious expectations required a greater investment of egos and higher and conflicting emotions. In this environment, our locker room had turned toxic and vicious.

I never played hockey again. The giddy delight of being on a very steep learning curve was dissipating, and I was unwilling to put in the hard work and risk to progress along the flattening curve. I would have to begin to care about my save percentage and the quality of my team mates. Besides, I had more than met my goals. I had reaffirmed my athletic identity, shared a sport with my husband and experienced an elusive locker room culture denied to most baby boomer women. Now my husband and I watch our beloved Chicago Blackhawks on TV. My brief career as a human target gave me the credentials to comment on an unattended five hole, or to express awe at the agile up and down moves of flopper goalies. I nod my head in recognition when a sports caster suggests that a player is trade material because he is a “cancer in the clubhouse.” After all, I know exactly what they are talking about. I’m one of the few women who’s been there.

The missing words in the following poem are anagrams (i.e. share the same letters like spot, post, stop) and the number of asterisks indicates the number of letters. Your job is to solve the missing words based on the above rules and the context of the poem. Scroll down for answers.

When I joined the ***** of women hockey players I got in over my head,

I found that I couldn’t stop or turn so I offered to be goalie instead.

With all the padding I wore I didn’t think that I would fear what I faced,

But with each onslaught, I went weak in the knees and my heart always *****.

In one game, the slapshot from the point ***** toward me faster and faster,

I trembled and put up my glove to avoid the oncoming disaster.

But then I heard that wonderful thunk and a thud that all goalies love

If I had ***** to open my eyes, I would have seen the puck in my glove!

 

 

 

 

 

 
Answers: cadre, raced, arced, cared

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